


in restraints

by pensee



Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal Extended Universe - Fandom
Genre: Anal Sex, BDSM Lite, Creampie, Handcuffs, Hannibal Extended Universe, Hint of perceived infidelity, M/M, Masturbation, Porn Watching, Spacedogs, Spanking, Voyeurism, discussions of bondage, no infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:41:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23813230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensee/pseuds/pensee
Summary: The object’s reflective metallic surface looks innocuous enough on their kitchen table, although it is not Adam’s breakfast cereal, the salt and pepper shakers, or the fruit bowl that Harlan had gifted them when they moved in. More to the point, the strange object is in the way of setting down his breakfast cereal where it’s supposed to go.“Nigel, why are there handcuffs at my seat?"-A fic giveaway, for the prompts: "Bondage" and "Adam being good for Nigel."
Relationships: Nigel (Charlie Countryman)/Adam Raki
Comments: 13
Kudos: 96





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the lovely @brokenteacup1 on Twitter. I hope you like! <3

The object’s reflective metallic surface looks innocuous enough on their kitchen table, although it is not Adam’s breakfast cereal, the salt and pepper shakers, or the fruit bowl that Harlan had gifted them when they moved in. More to the point, the strange object is in the way of setting down his breakfast cereal where it’s supposed to go. 

“Nigel, why are there handcuffs at my seat? There’s...no key to go with them.”

Each metal bracelet is undone, a makeshift shim sitting on Nigel’s placemat. 

Adam thinks that it’s nice that Nigel wanted to sit next to him at the four-person table, rather than sitting across from him, and he bites his tongue against asking about the handcuffs again as Nigel leans over the sink. He’s tying off a bit of sewing thread, and cutting the end with his teeth, finished closing a small gash in his arm. 

“What went wrong?”

“Fucking everything, darling. We’re going to have to move again. Can’t trust anyone nowadays,” Nigel says, the words a heated growl, and Adam swallows at the words “move again.” 

Nigel must realize he’s said something upsetting, because he stops mid-rant and reaches for Adam’s face. 

“Look, I’m sorry, angel. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’ll fucking...I’ll lie low for a little while, hm? Don’t worry about anything. I’ll take care of it.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Adam says, as Nigel vanishes into their bedroom, leaving the handcuffs behind. 

At least they’re not bloody, he thinks, picking up the shim and slipping it back into Nigel’s wallet on the counter. He hums at the click of the handcuffs as he snaps them shut. 

  
  
  
  


“You don’t like being restrained?”

Nigel raises a curious brow at him and cups his hand around his cigarette as he lights it. They’re on the balcony, a rickety fire escape with a ladder Adam wouldn’t trust to hold anything rattling in the slightest breeze. A sudden burst of strong wind carries the worst of the smoke away, and Adam curls up on his chair, chin to his knees and arms wrapped around his calves. 

“Are you asking why I didn’t dump the handcuffs from the other day? And no, I don’t like being tied up or chained to anything. Except to you, gorgeous.”

The last part of that is a joke that normally applies to married couples, and Adam laughs dryly. Is that what they were? They’d cohabitated for long enough. 

“You could have gotten rid of the cuffs, but you didn’t.”

Nigel takes a drag of his cigarette. “They’re not the fur-lined bullshit you see in porn, but they could have their uses. Practical, and otherwise.”

Adam hums. “If you’re going to use them to keep someone else incapacitated, please don’t do it on our home.” 

Nigel laughs, a deep rumble that’s not so easily carried away by the wind. 

“Never, gorgeous,” he promises, and rests a reassuring hand on the nape of Adam’s neck. 

  
  
  
  


Adam had thought about emailing Beth about this, but she would perhaps not appreciate this particular content in her inbox. He’d forwarded her a question about live sex clubs once before, and been rebuffed. Harlan would be more willing to help; he’d been the one to suggest for all those years that Adam find someone to be intimate with. 

Harlan asks him if he’s sure at least three times before forwarding him a link to one of the more popular online shopping sites. Adam’s brow furrows. Alright, there were a lot of choices. At first glance, most of the pieces appeared to be leather, although he suspected they’d be revealed as vinyl masquerading as the real thing if he browsed through the product descriptions. 

“You should talk to Nigel about this before you buy anything,” Harlan says, crease between his eyes deeper than the one between Adam’s. “This isn’t something you spring on a guy unless you’ve hinted at both wanting to try it before.”

“Well, he made it clear that he didn’t want to be the one restrained.”

Harlan swallows. “Alright, yeah, that’s a good start. But, please. Look, Adam. You don’t have to buy anything until you’re both satisfied with what you find.” 

Okay, Adam thinks. That makes sense. But Nigel was also more amiable to surprises than he was. He’d liked it when Adam surprised him with wearing one of his shirts and nothing else when he came home last week. Purchasing (possibly leather, that was to be determined) bondage gear was a larger investment in every way, but that was fine. Adam liked the process of discovering something new, learning about it until he could feel confident in his knowledge. 

Saying goodbye to Harlan and ending their video call, he continues browsing, taking a detour into a brand of decorative ropes made specifically for bondage play. 

The model in the promotional photograph is clearly nude, though their genitals and areolae have been censored, a pattern of intricate knots and ties stretching across their arms and chest, criss-crossing their torso, and stopping mid-thigh. The model is in a kneeling position, the ropes keeping them like this until whomever tied them up came back to undo them. 

Adam thinks of how safe it must feel, to be held close to himself like that, knowing that someone--that Nigel--would always come back to cut him free. He shivers at the imagined sensation of Nigel’s knife on his arms and back, cold metal slipping against vulnerable parts of him, the muted sound of the rope’s fibers parting under the blade. 

His cursor hovers over a skein of pale pink rope--he remembers Nigel complimenting him on the way he blushed during sex, and thinks it’ll strike something in the other man, to see him in this color in particular--though he adds it to his wish list, rather than his cart in a last-minute burst of skepticism. 

After another half hour of browsing, he closes out his windows and shuts his laptop, for some reason feeling disappointed at his empty cart. 

  
  
  


Nigel is watching pornography, and watching it without him. 

He can hear Nigel muttering to himself as he jerks off, eyes fixed on the laptop screen as Adam pauses at the threshold to their bedroom, things like  _ fucking take it, baby, fuck yeah _ , things that he often says to Adam when they’re having sex. 

His body obscures about half the screen, but Adam can hear a woman’s high moaning, then a fleshy slap. The camera cuts to a different angle, and he can see her tanned back, long blonde hair in tousled waves, and her arms cuffed in front of her, forcing her ass up. Another pan to her legs being kept in place by a spreader bar as a condom-clad cock ruts into her asshole, gleaming wet with lube. 

It is a compilation video, and he hears Nigel’s groan when the footage switches to that of a man in a very similar position, though his legs are spread wide to accommodate the unseen male beneath him and the second one at his back lining himself up to penetrate him. 

“Fucking--,” Nigel hisses, coming into a wad of tissues as the recording skips to the restrained man dripping come as one of the men fucking him demands he  _ spread his legs wider, slut _ . 

Adam hovers in the doorway, chewing his lip. His face feels hot, but he doesn’t know whether he liked the videos or not. The actors seemed to be enjoying themselves, but was this what Nigel wanted, when he had someone at his mercy? To call them slut and make them--

“Baby, what the fuck are you doing out there?” Nigel says, voice fond as he tosses the tissues away and tucks himself back into his boxers, belt and pants still undone as he tugs Adam into the room. 

“Wash your hands, Nigel,” Adam teases, though he oddly doesn’t mind the traces of lube and precome that Nigel presses into his hips as he guides him to the bed, where the laptop is playing a different video now, two brunettes with massive breasts fucking a double-ended dildo. 

“How long were you watching me?” Nigel asks, kissing his shoulder and putting the laptop onto the nightstand. 

“Since the video with the blonde. When you were talking to yourself. When you told me that you wouldn’t want to be the one restrained, is that what you meant?”

Nigel reaches for his carton of cigarettes in the top drawer. “You mean about the handcuffs? Sure, I’ve tied a few people up in my day. But not as often for sex. It’s just a nice thing to think about.”

He pauses. “I know that big fucking brain of yours, Adam. What are you thinking about?” 

“Would you want to chain me up? Or tie me up? Like I was your slut?”

Nigel’s reclining against the pillows, Adam sitting upright at his hip, and Nigel pulls him down so they’re both staring at the ceiling. Adam’s nose twitches as Nigel lights his cigarette. 

“I’ve dealt with a lot of people in my life, baby. A lot of people I thought were disposable, that I treated worse than those people--those fucking actors--treated the people in those videos.

“The very last fucking thing I want is to fucking treat you like that. But, you know, that shit still gets me hard, I can’t help that.”

Adam knows. He’s had a collection of pornography he’s revisited for years, some of it that he doesn’t think he’d be interested in trying in reality. 

“If you wanted to have sex, you should have asked me,” he says, and Nigel chuckles, throwing his arm across Adam’s shoulders. 

“We’re gonna be here for a while, then.”

Adam smiles. “It’s the weekend, I have nowhere else to be.” 

  
  
  


Adam gnaws on the skin around his thumbnail for a few seconds before he stops himself. Dad had told him not to bite his nails as a kid, so he’d cheated a little by biting his fingertips instead. He’d mostly cured himself of the habit, but sometimes it slipped back in when he was anxious. 

The package-tracking app he’d downloaded said his online shopping order had arrived at eleven in the morning, but it was now twelve-fifteen in the afternoon, and after the near gut-wrenching disappointment of not seeing anything at their box downstairs or at the front desk at that time, he’d snuck back upstairs and tried not to let it bother him. 

He’d told Nigel he needed air again, which was true, but why hadn’t the postman said something, when Adam passed him on the way out the first time. He knew what Adam looked like, he had been delivering mail here since they moved in, he--

“Oh, Adam! I’m sorry about earlier. There was a mixup in the mailroom, I’m glad you’re down here so we didn’t have to call upstairs and risk getting Nigel on the phone.”

Brianna, the girl who worked the afternoon shift at the front desk is smiling at him, holding out a package that fits easily in her hands, and Adam tries to smile through the rush of almost-nausea, mixed with relief, he feels. The return address tells him this is the package he’s been expecting, and he really wants to go upstairs with it and not suffer through three more minutes of Brianna talking about how boring her day was. 

“I’ve been working on Nigel’s phone etiquette,” he says, gulping down the flood of saliva in his mouth. “He doesn’t answer with ‘who the fuck are you, and what the fuck do you want’ anymore.”

Brianna laughs, a light and happy sound, and Adam relaxes a bit. She had a nice laugh. 

“I’m sure you’re working wonders, but I’m not taking any chances. Your man is gorgeous, but he’s always gonna be a bit rough around the edges. Have a good day, Adam.”

“You have a good afternoon, Brianna,” he says, heading back to the elevators as quick as he can. 

Rough around the edges, he thinks. Hm. Well, I like him that way. 

  
  
  
  


Nigel is watching a television show about sports medicine when he makes it back upstairs. 

“Check this fucking thing out,” Nigel says, not looking away from the TV. “Fucking stress test with electrodes, I’m surprised she isn’t tripping over all those fucking wires.”

There is a woman running on a treadmill, wearing an EEG cap, mask, and weighted vest with its own tangle of red, yellow, and blue wires fastened around her torso. 

Unless Nigel has suddenly become interested in the sexual appeal of sports medicine, Adam doesn’t think this is an opportune time to bring up the handcuffs that arrived in the mail. 

He’d settled on fetish cuffs that were padded for the bedroom, although they surely cost more than the ones they had sitting around in a kitchen drawer for free. They were painted a similar color to the bondage rope he’d been looking at before, almost unnecessarily pretty, and he was too excited to keep them a secret for long, but maybe he’d wait until Nigel was finished watching his show. 

“Sit down, gorgeous, there’s an extra beer for y--What’s that?”

“Something I ordered. I’m going to go put it away.”

He wants to look at it for the first time in their home, see if it fits. 

Going into the kitchen for Nigel’s knife, he slices the packaging tape with it and then moves to the bedroom, opening the box and removing the bit of styrofoam packing material around a second box that contains the cuffs. 

They’re lighter than the real cuffs, although they don’t have a release other than the key in yet another smaller box that’s painted the same pale shade of pink. If he tugs at them the wrong way, they might break. The lining inside is soft, and Adam strokes the pads of his fingers against it for a minute before remembering that Nigel may be wondering what’s taking him so long. 

He removes everything from the shipping box and tucks it into his dresser, flattening the box and making a mental note to take it to the trash chute later. Putting everything near the bin in the kitchen, he settles on the couch next to Nigel, leaning into his side after reaching for his now-sweating beer. 

“Fuck, if I ever had to run on a treadmill at that speed with all that shit attached to me, I’d fall and eat shit thirty seconds in,” Nigel says, Adam watching the professional athlete onscreen--a different person than before--repeat the stress test procedure as the show cuts to an animation about how the respiratory system compensates for anoxic conditions like intense exercise. 

“I hope not. I wouldn’t be able to cover all those medical bills,” Adam says, and bats at Nigel’s face as a wet kiss is pressed to his temple. 

_ When are you going to bring it up _ ?

The question pulls at him, but he knows they have time. The handcuffs are here, they’re safe in his drawer. He can bring it up whenever he wants. Maybe he’ll even ask Nigel about it, first. Even if he thinks the surprise would be okay, too. 

_ We have time _ , he thinks, and settles in to watch the show. 

  
  
  


There’s an unfamiliar number on Nigel’s phone. 

Nigel doesn’t have a phone lock, not even a fingerprint scan, because he complains that he’d forget a numbered code or that he’s had his fingerprint scanned often enough in police stations across the country, so Adam occasionally checks his text messages and phone calls for him. Nigel has sometimes missed important updates about his...business...because he’s forgotten his phone or forgotten to turn the ringer back on. 

Adam flicks the screen open, clicking on the little red bubble that signals that Nigel has a new text, and listens for the sound of the bathroom door opening so that Adam can show him. 

_ Hey, bb, remember me? im one of eric’s girls, but id be urs if u wanted.  _

Accompanying the text is a selfie of a blonde in a low-cut top, miming kissing the camera. 

Adam would dismiss it as spam, if not for the fact that he recognizes the background of the photo as a club where some of Nigel’s deals went through. 

“Nigel?” he asks, not loud enough to be heard, his voice starting to waver. 

He knows this is abnormal, for someone to be contacting Nigel out of the blue like this. Adam knew the names of all his usual contacts, and only one of them was a woman...from another country. 

He doubted this girl was really after a business proposition. 

His throat feels tight for some reason, and he tosses the phone onto the nightstand with less care than usual, flinching as it lands with a metallic thump. 

He’s across the room before he knows what’s happening, pulling the handcuffs from his dresser and fastening them around his wrists. Grabbing the key in trembling fingers, he crawls onto their bed and sits back against the headboard, breathing deeply, his hands heavy and useless in his lap as he alternates between squeezing his eyes shut and watching the steam leak out from beneath the bathroom door. 

Nigel emerges a minute later, toweling off his hair and nude, Adam tracing the familiar path of hair down from his chest, to his prominent gut, and down to his soft cock. His view blocked by the towel, Nigel says, “Hey, what was that sound? Like a bang--”

Tossing the towel aside, he goes to his underwear drawer and slips on a pair of boxers without looking at Adam.

“Jesus, what the fuck, gorgeous,” he says, when he turns to see Adam sitting there with his wrists encased in the light pink cuffs. 

“I bought h-handcuffs,” Adam says, still taking deep breaths. “For you. For you to try on me. I saw your phone, just now. A woman was texting you. Flirting with you, I think. I put the handcuffs on after throwing your phone onto the nightstand.” 

It’ll be like pulling teeth if he has to explain it again, and his teeth click as he shuts his mouth, hoping Nigel caught all that. 

“Blonde?” Nigel asks, clearly already knowing the answer. “Fucking--”

“So, she was flirting with you?”

“Yeah, for God knows what fucking reason. She thinks her pimp treats her like shit. Which is true. Not that I’d treat her any better.”

Adam frowns in irritation. “You keep saying that. That you treat people badly, but you’ve never treated me like that.” 

He knows it’s silly to say. Of course Nigel had had a life before him, where he hurt people, and worse, but it’s close to dishonesty for Nigel to claim that there wasn’t some other part of him that was...unlike who he’d been before. 

“I’m not flirting with her, whatever she thinks. You can delete the message yourself. Later. Not...not now,” Nigel says, sitting up next to him on the bed. Adam appreciates that he leaves “later” as an option, knowing he needs time to process everything. “You bought handcuffs. When we had a free pair in the kitchen somewhere.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “They’re a padded festish set. I didn’t want to end up with bloody wrists if you handcuffed me to the bed.” 

“Why are they pink?”

“Because I like pink. Because I thought of you thinking of me wearing pink. Like, the color of a blush.”

Nigel groans, but it’s probably pleased. 

“Angel, you’re too much sometimes.” 

“Brianna called you ‘rough around the edges’.”

“The front desk girl?” Nigel scoffs. “Ain’t that fucking right.” 

“But I thought about it, and I like that about you. I bought them because I thought you would be interested in them. That it would feel good for you to have that, from me. Since you didn’t want to be the one restrained.” 

“Interested? Because I was watching that fucking bondage porn, or--”

Adam fiddles with the handcuff key between his palms. 

“Well...maybe I was a little interested in it, too. It feels...Hm, it feels safe. Like I’m not going anywhere, because you would’ve put me there. And I’d never have to worry about you coming back, because you always come back.” 

“Even if I have to shimmy out of the back of a fucking cop car to get here, huh,” Nigel says, his voice going rough on the last syllable. “But, Christ, you almost gave me a heart attack, sitting there with those on. Give me a fucking warning next time.”

“I thought you liked surprises,” Adam says, and inhales at the barely-there kisses Nigel presses to each of his closed eyelids. 

“Let’s be fucking reasonable, baby.”

“I’m more reasonable than you are. Ninety-percent of the time,” Adam points out, and smiles at the biting kiss this earns him. 

“Sixty-forty,” Nigel says, and kisses him again. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The smutty epilogue, with some spanking. Enjoy. <3

Adam is grateful for the sturdiness of the four-poster that had come with the apartment. Once something he considered comically large for their single-family apartment’s master bedroom, the frame was solid wood and strong enough to handle his restless squirming as he tugged against the cuffs that were secured against the posts at the head of the mattress. 

After much trial and very little error, Nigel had surprised him with a second set of handcuffs, a twin of the ones Adam had originally purchased, and Adam had taken a peek at their shared online shopping wish list a few days ago, which now contained ropes, thick leather ankle cuffs, and a small selection of floggers. 

“Stay. Fucking. Still,” Nigel says, bringing his hand down on Adam’s red and aching upper flank, right where his ass met thigh. 

“It  _ hurts _ , Nigel,” Adam barks, which of course earns him another smack. 

“That was the point, darling. You told me, and I quote ‘I want to feel it for the next week’.” 

Adam had said so, and he squirms at the happy shiver he’s anticipating tomorrow, sitting down at breakfast and whimpering at the sting in his thighs and ass. 

“I’m going to feel it for a m-month, at this rate,” he says, exaggerating because he knows it makes Nigel feel as nice as this makes him feel. 

“And you’re not done yet,” Nigel says, low and promising, Adam craning his neck to watch Nigel apply lube to his cock, spreading his legs, muscles twitching as Nigel touches him where he’d already clung to the other man’s fingers earlier. 

Adam bites down on a scream as Nigel pushes in, his thighs colliding unforgivingly with the backs of Adam’s own, Nigel’s belly pressing against the round of his ass. 

“ _ A-h _ ,” he groans, clenching down around Nigel inside of him, because, holy  _ hell _ , it hurt. 

“Come on, you’re fine, you’re being good, gorgeous,” Nigel says, because he knows it’ll soothe him, probably even more than the arnica he’ll apply later will. “So good for me. Shit, that’s tight.”

Adam would laugh at how blatantly pornographic this all seems, except for how much he enjoys it, his little punched-breathless grunts as Nigel mounts him like a dog mounts a bitch. 

“Fuck,” he bites out, when Nigel drags his hips up, gets himself even deeper. His arms strain against the cuffs, but he can still feel his hands, and  _ fuck, fuck, fuck- _ -

Nigel reaches around his straining body to get a hand on him, and Adam shakes his head. 

“Too much, gorgeous?” Nigel asks, smile in his voice as he continues to fuck himself in and out at a leisurely pace, Adam keening as another slap lands on the sensitive side of his thigh. 

Adam can come untouched if the conditions are right, and he’s been so intensely aroused since the handcuffs fastened shut he probably would have been able to soon after the first smack, but he doesn’t want to come yet, or maybe at all.

Now was about being cuffed, about giving both of them what they wanted, and Adam had definitely gotten that in spades. Now, it was Nigel’s turn. 

“I want you to come inside of me first,” he says, and the words don’t even sound foreign anymore, no matter how silly they sound when he sometimes mutters them aloud when he’s masturbating. 

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Nigel says, his thrusts picking up. “So fucking _ perfect _ for me. Fuck.”

Adam feels the quick, sharp impacts against the bruised skin of his thighs and ass, but the fucking’s pushed him to a place where the pain and pleasure are blended into one.  _ This  _ is where he loves to be. 

They’re both dripping sweat, Adam’s limbs shaking, insides stuffed full, but Nigel isn’t tiring just yet, his hips smacking into Adam’s own. 

He curses as Adam clenches down on him one last time, coming inside of him with a low groan, letting Adam collapse onto the bed as he pulls out, pulling Adam’s left cheek aside to smear the wet tip of his cock against his hole as he jerks himself to milk out the last few weak spurts between Adam’s legs. 

Adam hums dreamily at the wetness between his thighs, feeling some drip along the seam of his balls as he sits on his feet, knees squashed into the pillows as he relieves the tension on the cuffs. 

“Key, please,” he murmurs, and flushes warm when Nigel kisses his neck and undoes the cuffs around his wrists in a few quick moments, warm hands soothing over the red marks along his arms. 

“Do you want to come, angel?” Nigel asks, gathering him into his arms. 

“Mm, feels like I already did,” Adam says, ignoring his still-dripping cock, though he lets Nigel put his hand around him, lazily jerking. 

Holding the handcuff keys in his hands, his mouth twists. There was a lot of trust in these two little pieces of metal. 

“I wouldn’t let just anyone do this to me, you know,” he says, and Nigel chuckles. 

“I wouldn’t do this to just anyone,” he says, and Adam studies the pair of pink handcuffs hanging from the bedposts, runs his palm against the soft hairs on the arm that Nigel has around him. 

“I know,” he says, and smiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Twitter @penseeart to scream about HEU. <3


End file.
